Written by James Hawley, CEO
If you are trying to hire right now (and let’s face it who isn’t) you know all too well how difficult it is. At NextPath Career Partners we do this for a living and believe us we know how challenging finding that great match is. It’s torture to most but to us it’s what gets us out of bed each morning! What can we say, we like a good challenge! Knowing it’s difficult we warn our clients not to make things more difficult in hiring process by committing these five mistakes when trying to land top talent.
Weak Online Presence
Let’s face it we all look up a company and its employees online before we do business. Often the quality is very poor due to lack of information, culture, and reviews. Take a look at your website, LinkedIn page, Glassdoor reviews, etc. and view it from a candidate’s point of view. Would you apply? Now look at your closest competitor and see who you’d pick if you were a candidate!
Broken Recruiting Process
If you have an outside recruiting partner this won’t matter but if you do all your recruiting internally you could have a broken process. We hear from candidates all the time that they apply to a company (that are qualified for) but never hear from the internal recruiters. To see if your process is broken try applying with a sample candidate that fits great. You can create an email address and see how your team reaches out? Do they even reach out? Test and be sure it works.
Batch Selection Process
Do you want to see several strong candidates at one time to select who you want to hire? That sounds wonderful but in this market it’s a costly mistake. There are too few strong qualified candidates for each job. If you wait for “several” you will likely lose the first person that could have been the best. The companies we see winning the talent war take a “first best” process so when they see someone who fits even if they are the very first candidate, they hire them!
Speed Up or Be Left Behind
Too often companies simply drag out their hiring process weeks or months. By the time companies decide to make an offer the candidate is long gone (often to a competitor). The winning companies make hiring a priority to be the first mover to grab the best talent before others have even setup their first interview. Look at your time to hire cycle from resume in to offer made. If it’s longer than 1-2 weeks you are losing the battle for the best people.
Candidate Time Vortex
This area comes up again and again by candidates who get frustrated with prospective employers. They say they interviewed and then nothing… silence. When you ask them how long it’s been, they will say “it’s been 2 days.” To us that doesn’t sound like long, however, in a candidate’s world time stands still. In candidate time two days feels like two weeks.
Looking to work with a top-notch recruitment agency?
Check out our website nextpathcp.com or call 1(800) 869-2353 for more information on a partnership.
